Jesus abolishes divisions and
separation. Isolated outsiders – lepers, the lame, blind and deaf are all
healed, the dead given life; and all sent back to those they love, back
to family and community. And it is finally in his death on a cross,
that the ugliness of our stupid divisions and divisiveness will be
revealed and put to death in his wounded body. He is our peace, and he has
reconciled us to himself and to one another once and for all.
As we prepared to enter this abbey, each of
us can probably recall at least one friend or relative asking, “Why do have to
go there to pray? What’s so special about a monastery; you can pray anywhere.”
But we sensed it; we knew in our hearts that we
needed a community. We needed to be with these people who did this
“thing” together. How precious, how necessary, how good it is for us to be here
- together in this place. Even when, or more especially when, all seems
craziness or burden, when we hurt and disappoint and irk one another, even
then, perhaps most of all then, we are invited to muster the humility,
vulnerability, and forgiveness that are demanded of us, and understand that it
would not be good for us to be alone. That my way is not as good as our way,
that we are always better together than apart. It is, after all, good for us to be here and
to remember always the “incredible care we have for each other at the core of our
being.”2
It is in community that we discover our
need and loneliness over and over again. And, if we’re honest, we discover to
our dismay and salvation our total incapacity to do this life alone. We see the
beauty of our incapacity, the beauty of our insufficiency. We see how little we
are when left to ourselves. Then it is that we become most truly like Jesus,
then we become his beautiful, wounded body. Then perhaps we can persevere in
hope, even if sometimes only a thread of hope. This reminds me of our own Cistercian martyr of
Tibhirine, Blessed Luc, who was often overheard murmuring in the quiet darkness of the monastery after Compline, “OK, Lord, I will give you one more
day. Just one more.”
If we do not remember our essential goodness, our capacity to be more loving than we suspected, we are doomed. This is our only hope, our destiny. To be healed, transformed, conformed to Christ, does not mean that we will immediately get better, holier, or nicer,3 but we will be opened to “the harrowing wonder and disequilibrium” of our desperate need for Christ Jesus and for one another. Then at last we will be perfectly disposed to receive and to become Holy Communion.
Photograph by Brother Brian. Meditation by one of the monks. References: 1. Robert Barron. 2. David Brooks. 3. Sr. Miriam Pollard.
